IT in an emergency

The tragic incident of 2004 in Indonesia sparked mass interest in how IT was used during and after the Tsunami. As many of the communication links were broken or damaged, they were unable to be used. For example, Postal services, phone networks (physical connections). So therefore the people with remote quick services such as mobile phones and email were able to send and receive information. As these media's were the most used, many forms of information was able to be sent e.g. pictures, videos etc. It also caused mass interaction between people and organisations trying to help the survivors of the Tsunami, by people donating to these online charities etc.

Out of this, many virtual communities were formed and people brought together through there experiences. Many blogs and web pages were set up so that someone involved in the accident could contact other people about it, and many of the websites relayed constant updates on what was happening.

The reason modern communication was used over the much older technology was because it could be used very easily and because it was so resistant to the Tsunami itself. Many Internet cafes were recently built, before the Tsunami, because of the surge of interest in the Internet so people could just log into there account and send an email to friends and relatives.

The services that were there, were very effective in there purpose of relaying information from one person's device to another.